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Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1016 - China and the new social credit system
Hi Mom,
When I saw these items in Patrick Tanguy's excellent Sentiers newsletter, I was reminded of Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, which describes a social reputation system called "Whuffie."
The Chinese system seems more pervasive and invasive. Beyond just shaming jaywalkers, the social credit system becomes the technological version of piety and morality long instituted by religion, tying good deeds and "the proper" to entry to Heaven and salvation from Hell.
FROM:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/02/chinas-dangerous-dream-of-urban-control/553097/
Known by the anodyne name “social credit,” this system is designed to reach into every corner of existence both online and off. It monitors each individual’s consumer behavior, conduct on social networks, and real-world infractions like speeding tickets or quarrels with neighbors. Then it integrates them into a single, algorithmically determined “sincerity” score. Every Chinese citizen receives a literal, numeric index of their trustworthiness and virtue, and this index unlocks, well, everything. In principle, anyway, this one number will determine the opportunities citizens are offered, the freedoms they enjoy, and the privileges they are granted.
Need that seat in the bus?
Want to be first in line for entry to an exclusive shop's grand opening?
Want to be able to view an art exhibition at all?
There's a system for that.
The stories of the new Chinese surveillance system has spread through western culture and many are crying ethnocentrism for our reaction.
Is it ethnocentrism to find this news scary? Isn't the greater part of the fear the belief that the system may catch on in other countries, like this one?
In rebuttal to the comment Tanguy shared below of someone on Twitter who lives in Beijing, is our reaction unfair "demonizing" or is it just natural fear of the spread of a new form totalitarianism? Isn't it just fear of the Panopticon?
FROM -
Sentiers No.27 — Facebook. Fixes. Centaurs. Half a planet. China.
China 🇨🇳
China will ban people with poor ‘social credit’ from planes and trains
Plenty of mentions of Black Mirror when this came out and I’d say that yes, overall such a system is ripe for abuse and another step towards total surveillance. But, I’ll also say that most of us don’t know much about China, or at least don’t properly grasp the context for various announcements. I can’t vouch for the poster below but it’s one example of context and digging a bit deeper:
Ian Goodrum on Twitter: "Some tweets about China's social credit system, how it isn't actually Black Mirror and how you should stop using facile pop cultural references to demonize countries you haven't bothered to understand."
Though, again, who’s that guy and where are the text shots even from?
Plenty of mentions of Black Mirror when this came out and I’d say that yes, overall such a system is ripe for abuse and another step towards total surveillance. But, I’ll also say that most of us don’t know much about China, or at least don’t properly grasp the context for various announcements. I can’t vouch for the poster below but it’s one example of context and digging a bit deeper:
Ian Goodrum on Twitter: "Some tweets about China's social credit system, how it isn't actually Black Mirror and how you should stop using facile pop cultural references to demonize countries you haven't bothered to understand."
Though, again, who’s that guy and where are the text shots even from?
When a camera mounted above one of 50 of the city’s busiest intersections detects a jaywalker, it snaps several photos and records a video of the violation. The photos appear on an overhead screen so the offender can see that he or she has been busted, then are cross-checked with the images in a regional police database. …at KFC China’s “smart restaurant” in Beijing, customers stand in front of a screen, have their face scanned (again, Baidu is part of the joint endeavor), and receive menu suggestions based on their age, sex, and facial expression
I’m quite aware that most of what I post concerning China is the dystopic stuff bubbling up in Western media. I appreciate any pointers to good English or French “China watchers” out there. (I’m already aware of The Magpie Digest.)
MORE:The technology’s veneer of convenience conceals a dark truth: Quietly and very rapidly, facial recognition has enabled China to become the world’s most advanced surveillance state. A hugely ambitious new government program called the “social credit system” aims to compile unprecedented data sets, including everything from bank-account numbers to court records to internet-search histories, for all Chinese citizens. Based on this information, each person could be assigned a numerical score, to which points might be added for good behavior like winning a community award, and deducted for bad actions like failure to pay a traffic fine. The goal of the program, as stated in government documents, is to “allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.”
and
All sorts of data will feed into this new program, but facial recognition (along with gait analysis and voice recognition, also enabled by rapid advances in machine learning and cloud computing) has the potential to one day give it something like omniscience. China’s government and commercial sectors make available to each other the endless streams of personal information they gather. Because companies have access to vast amounts of consumer data, industry experts predict that in the coming months Chinese facial-recognition software will become even more accurate. Western companies may be exploiting the same machine-learning technology, but nobody is rolling it out like the Chinese.
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Reflect and connect.
Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you, Mom.
I miss you so very much, Mom.
Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.
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- Days ago = 1018 days ago
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1804.17 - 10:10
NEW (written 1708.27) NOTE on time: I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of your death, Mom, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of your death, Mom. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom.
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